ScaleCommerce Uses CrowdSec to Plummet Operational Costs and Skyrocket Efficiency

ScaleCommerce, a leading provider of high-performance and secure online shop solutions, leverages CrowdSec to reduce operational costs and supercharge efficiency for their products and clients.

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ScaleCommerce, is a leader in e-commerce hosting, offering Smoxy, a powerful SaaS solution specifically optimized for online shops. The company operates in Germany and supports around 180 customers with over 8000 containers. They aim to deliver the fastest and most secure online shopping experiences, but the ever-growing threat landscape poses considerable hurdles. ScaleCommerce leverages CrowdSec to stay ahead of emerging threats, keep operational costs low, and increase efficiency. 

The challenge

With a sizable infrastructure like the one operated by ScaleCommerce, handling bot traffic has been a primary issue, especially during high-demand events like product releases. Prior to implementing CrowdSec, one of their major clients experienced up to 3 million hits in one hour, overwhelming their resources.

Resource allocation has been another significant hurdle for ScaleCommerce and their clients. The surge in traffic meant clients needed to overprovision resources to maintain performance during peak times, leading to higher operational costs. Not to mention that with such a diverse set of customers, each with unique requirements, managing security configurations across multiple nodes and instances was becoming increasingly complex.

However, ScaleCommerce rose up to the challenge by integrating CrowdSec early in its development. “We implemented CrowdSec 0.1,” recalls Kamil Czujowski, Performance and Application Engineer at ScaleCommerce. Initially, they deployed the CrowdSec Security Engine on individual customer nodes, but they soon transitioned to a more scalable solution with a global instance managing multiple customers. This allowed for centralized management while providing customized scenarios for each client.

Reducing operational costs and enhancing efficiency with CrowdSec

ScaleCommerce leverages the CrowdSec Security Stack and its custom scenarios to identify and mitigate bad bots more effectively. This significantly reduced the load on their servers during high-traffic events, ensuring better performance and availability for legitimate users.

CrowdSec helped us block approximately 95% of malicious bot traffic.

Kamil Czujowski, Performance and Application Engineer at ScaleCommerce

With this radical decrease in malicious inbound traffic, ScaleCommerce clients experienced reduced infrastructure costs. By filtering out unnecessary traffic, clients no longer needed to over-provision resources, leading to substantial savings. “This was a critical improvement, particularly for clients like Overkill, who saw a dramatic decrease in required resources,” says Kamil.

More flexibility, more control

The adoption of CrowdSec enabled the ScaleCommerce team to streamline their operations. They could now manage security for multiple customers through a single, centralized instance, significantly reducing the complexity and overhead associated with infrastructure management.

CrowdSec provided ScaleCommerce with the flexibility to create and deploy custom security scenarios tailored to their clients’ needs. “This ability to fine-tune security measures allowed us to adapt quickly to evolving threats,” says Kamil. “We can efficiently manage security settings across multiple instances, ensuring consistent protection and without compromising on performance.”

Scalability and improved customer satisfaction

ScaleCommerce’s new product, Smoxy, integrates CrowdSec’s security features, allowing customers to benefit from enhanced security without changing their hosting providers. This flexibility has made it easier for clients to adopt robust security measures, fostering growth and customer satisfaction.

By reducing downtime and ensuring better performance during peak traffic periods, ScaleCommerce enhanced their customers’ online shopping experiences. “Clients appreciated the lower operational costs and the peace of mind that came with knowing their sites were available and secure,” says Kamil.

Making the internet a safer place for online businesses

CrowdSec has been instrumental in helping us tackle the dual challenges of managing high traffic and ensuring robust security for our products and our clients.

Kamil Czujowski, Performance and Application Engineer at ScaleCommerce

The partnership has not only led to significant cost savings and operational efficiency but has also empowered ScaleCommerce to offer superior security solutions to their clients. By continuously evolving and adapting to new threats, ScaleCommerce and CrowdSec are making the internet a safer place for online businesses and their customers.